Published 3:57 am, Monday, April 4, 2016

Christians hope to make good on half of the directive to “go, and sin no more.” We go, but we sin some more.

Creative, we mere mortals be -- adding new “wrongs” on a daily basis. Thankfully, seasons are not named to commemorate our blunders.

Some miscues are the result of fiendish premeditation inflated by dreams of “15 minutes of fame.” I remember extreme tackiness last year when a postal employee piloted his homemade flying machine -- maybe herded would be a more accurate term -- all the way to Washington, D.C. You remember -- the guy who landed his whirlybird on the White House lawn. Talk about special delivery.

The “incident” hasn’t been in the news lately. Perhaps he “plea dealt,” complete with tearful confession and heart-rending apology.

The likes of it shouldn’t make the news; such coverage encourages one-upmanship among such “doofuses,” and there are many.

It is my intention now to get personal. Just as Ted Cruz takes umbrage to ugly talk about his wife, my dander is fluffed when blood kin feels the sharp edge of a fine. It was assessed last month, tacked on to the rent of her Dallas apartment. The victim is my charming, witty and committed niece, Anne Elizabeth Newbury, in whom I am well pleased.

It wasn’t assessed for her pet’s destruction of property, or for taking a hunk out of the apartment manager. Shucks, her doggie, Emma, is a docile sort.

Emma was indiscrete on the lawn, however, and was “found out” by new technical methodology that gets to the bottom of things.

The $264 fine jolts. I mean, couldn’t there have been a warning?

Wouldn’t a fine of, oh, say $50 be more easily defended?

I mean, she’s a law-abiding American woman, passionate about public service. Anne -- with a master’s degree in social work -- recently was injured in the line of duty while “on the clock” at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital.

Unable to work for a spell, she could no doubt provide strong excuses should this issue reach a court of law. I think both judge and jury could be tilted her way.

An initial question might be, “How long was the leash?” If it’s a long one, the indiscretion may have occurred around the corner, behind a bush, or otherwise out of view. Is my niece’s workplace injury such that she’s tending her dog from a wheelchair?

She has always had a bent toward helping others. I’m eager to hear her account of the charges.

There is always the possibility that the informant -- my brother Fred -- has embellished the story. He’s always been bad about that; once he went on a crying spree, blaming me for smacking him in the mouth with a rotten tomato.

He was correct -- to a point -- but was only 5 at the time. Older and wiser, I was 12, and 100 percent intent to merely rid our dad’s garden of an almost-dead tomato vine.

I extracted it, barely noticing the bulging last tomato of summer. I twirled the vine, lasso-like. Pressed, I might have admitted the possibility of the rotten tomato breaking loose. Fate, though, may have deserved the blame for the “face-smacking” part. Besides, as I recall, he was standing too close.

So, exaggeration possibilities should be kept in mind. (Other examples could be cited, but time and space preclude more accounts.)

My brother is madder’n a hog caught in a barbed wire fence, however. Dr. Fred Newbury, nearing a half-century in higher education and in his third term as president of the faculties of Dallas Community College’s seven campuses, is a respected economist. Further, he’s an author, and one of the few remaining charter members of the Richland College faculty.

“How do they know it was your dog?” he questioned Anne. “They took swabs to apartment pets’ mouths recently, and say DNA doesn’t lie,” she answered. Anne is determined to “ante-up” with funds to cover the tab. A woman of her word, I’m pretty sure she won’t depend on proceeds from a “Go Fund Me” appeal on the Internet.

Dr. Don Newbury is a speaker in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Send inquiries/comments to newbury@speakerdoc.com.